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So we are about 4 weeks out from NAB 2014 and already the web is buzzing about new products that have surfaced prior to the big show. Once again CES has set the bar pretty high, I expect to see even more 4K | QHD content as the creators are finally starting to catch up to the hype from the Consumer TV groups.

Arri’s Alexa Mini

Arri announces the Alexa Mini, at BVE, this is a smaller, light weight (at 5lb) fully capable camera to fill in those Steadicam, Drone, and other times when a smaller lighter camera is necessary. Acquisition specs match those of the current Alexa models. 0.75-120fps ProRes2k, up to 30p in 2160, Arri Raw, DnxHD, with both 16×9 and 4×3 rasters available on the Alev4 Sensor

BlackMagicDesign Released the latest Intensity Pro4K, a PCIe based capture and playback card geared at emerging filmmakers and prosumers that includes not only 1080 60p functionality but also has the ability to handle 2160px QHD at up to 30p for just $199.00 USD.

Add to that the latest update to BMD’s big dog, DaVinci Resolve 11, and recent release of a Free version of professional compositor FUSION (a Windows only release). I am waiting to see what the team at BlackMagicDesign has in store for us on the Show Floor once the doors open on Monday.

FCPX was used as the main NLE for the Feature Film “Focus”

Apple has been touting FCPX with the release of “Focus” with Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Back to showing that their software is fully capable of being able to handle the needs of feature production, I look to see some things happening in the background at NAB to talk more about this.

Other companies are also showing some of their newest NAB2015 gear and software already.

Rampantdesigntools.com and their newly released 4K Effects and 5K Lighting Effects that allow users drag and drop simplicity for use within your productions.

I will also state that there will be way too many “cloud” discussions and even more companies trying to push their hyper- specific version of the sharing platform on us. Only a couple of the really big players understand the cloud and how it needs to be handled when working with really big data.

So it has been awhile since I posted here, been busy working on 3 projects, one of which included one of the new “social media clauses” so it has kept me rather limited.I will post my thoughts on some of the new gear that is already shipping prior to NAB so that people can check them out at the show.

I use storage from a number of manufacturers and never have I ever opened a hard drive box and recieved this level of performance with the ease and simplicity of the LBD2. LaCie has delivered the fastest single device I have ever used with my laptop. Equipped with Intel’s Thunderbolt 2 Technology, this 1TB sleek black box, elegantly styled and compact for it’s 1.4 pound weight, offers users the single most powerful drive I have ever used.

The Thunderbolt 2 interface in conjunction with the raided dual SSD drives inside offer users up to an astonishing 1.3 Gigabytes of data throughput per second, easily making LaCie’s LBD2 the fastest single drive publicly available. While listed price at around $1300 USD for a 1 TB volume might be cringeworthy to some, when you have the need for speed this is the drive to have.

This shows the raw speed of LaCie’s Little Big Disk 2, here showing performance over 1 GB per second when paired with a 2nd Gen Retina MacBook Pro with Intel’s Thunderbolt 2 technology.

The cost vs. performance is nothing short of astronomical, because we are talking about moving Gigabytes per second with this beast. That performance, equal if not better at times than the internal flash memory found in Apple’s New Mac Pro, and is unheard of outside of a incredibly small number of Post facilities or in the massive server farms that allow ITunes, Amazon and Google to spit out information to you in realtime on the web.

However for desktop users, this is a first, when built my first 1GBps array for a client in 2007, at that time it required 2 computers just to control the 72 spinning disks and cost nearly $500,000 in time and materials when finished.

I can now walk into a store and buy nearly the same throughput off the shelf and have ready to work on in mere minutes after I am out the door.

LaCie’s Little Big Disk 2 has become my main carry around work volume, I recently used it during an extended trip, where it allowed me to cut 4K ProRes 4444 content on my laptop, well away from my office, without having to work with the associated hassles of the offline / online workflow that location editing of that much content would normally require.

Cooke and Angénieux have a new partnership that is bringing the best in Prime Cine Lenses to the best in Cine Zooms, to create a new line of Anamorphic lenses, I have not seen them yet, but after talking to Les Zellan, I cannot wait to see them.http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/news/news.html

Flanders Scientific announced 5 New monitors include a massive 32″ Reference Monitor for Post Production, OnBoards and new OLED designs for Post and Production http://www.flandersscientific.com/index/

So buckle up, it’s going to be a 4K ride this NAB, so be prepared for a barrage of 4K every where you go.

The Hollywood Reporter posted yesterday about Barco showing their 4K Projector designed specifically for Post Production use, but a small blurb in that article also noted that Sony has announced that it will shoot and produce some of it’s pilot’s for next season in 4K.http://bit.ly/YEfklP

An award winning A.S.C. Cinematographer posted that Dobly might be showing a new reference monitor behind closed doors at the show. (no link I am not going to out him)

Convergent Design released info on their new Odyssey Monitor/Recorder. It’s a 1280×800,10bit, OLED panel that doubles as an HD/2k/4K recorder that will be able to do CanonRaw, ARRIRAW and 2K up to 60fps as well as DNX and ProRes. http://bit.ly/ZvZIQJ

Lastly for today, one of my new ventures for 2013 was to spread the tech word farther than I have been and to that I have started a new Tech Blog for my friends at Zacuto.com. I will have posts there every couple of weeks and once it gets going, I am hoping that the questions that come in from readers will allow me to help explain the some of the more popular issues and questions that filmmakers run into. Take a look at the first of will be many posts over the next few months. http://bit.ly/ZpKPvO

For many years Fujifilm UK has been very proud and privileged to have supported the most talented filmmakers that Britain has produced. From the camera to the screen, from film school shorts to Oscar winning features, it has been an honour working with you all and may we wish you all the very best for the future. Long live film!